ILO chief says Asian crisis may cause job losses, unrest

ILO chief says Asian crisis may cause job losses, unrest

BANGKOK (AP): Asia's economic crisis will lead to a tidal wave of job losses without safeguards for workers, especially women, children and illegal migrants, officials of the International Labor Organization said yesterday.

The collapse of once-booming Asian currencies and stock markets has sent jitters through the world economy in recent months, but the head of the ILO said at the opening of a regional meeting that worse would come when unemployment rises.

"The problem is not just how many jobs are going to be lost, but how many are not going to be created," Michel Hansenne, the ILO director general, said.

"Globalization, which has brought so much to this part of the world, will not be politically viable if it leads to deterioration of social justice," Hansenne said.

Hansenne urged governments preoccupied with their foreign reserves or meeting international bail-out conditions to also turn their attention to ways to deal with mass unemployment.

The ILO deals with global labor issues at the behest of the United Nations, organizing a dialog between governments, labor groups and employers. The three-day conference in Bangkok brings together participants from 36 countries.

In Thailand, where a currency devaluation in July triggered the regional economic meltdown, an estimated one million people could be thrown out of work, ILO officials said. They were more reticent about citing figures for other countries.

Meanwhile, countries like Vietnam struggling to shift from communism to a market-oriented economy are unlikely to see the high growth rates that would create large numbers of new jobs.

The boom that transformed parts of Asia over the past decade from agrarian to newly industrialized societies greatly cut poverty but also weakened the informal safety net in which family members who lost city jobs could return to their villages and expect support.

In most countries, no government social protection -- unemployment benefits, retraining or redeploying workers -- have been created to replace the old safety net.

A sharp increase in unemployment could be "catastrophic," Hansenne said.

"Even a deceleration of growth would generate social tensions."

The workers likely to suffer most would be women, children and migrants, who were the most vulnerable people in any major economic crisis, Hansenne said.

Roger Boehning, head of the ILO technical team for Southeast Asia, said that the current crisis could lead to the dismissal of "large numbers" of migrant workers in South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

The ranks of child laborers were likely to rise, Boehning said.

If women who work at unskilled jobs in, say, the garment industry, lose their jobs, they probably will send their children out to work to supplement income.

Even before the downturn, about 60 percent of the world's working children lived in Asia and one Asian child in five was estimated to be working. Forced labor to carry supplies for the army and build roads is common in Myanmar, the subject of an ILO commission of inquiry in Geneva.

The Bangkok delegates will discuss a proposed declaration demanding that member states respect the rights of workers to form unions, forbid forced labor and child labor and ensure that women receive the same pay as men for the same job.

Violators could not be expelled from the ILO, but would probably receive some form of public condemnation not now possible.

The ILO's board is to consider a draft declaration next March. It will be sent on for approval by the general assembly later in the year. Hansenne said that "no Asian view" would be decided at the current regional meeting.